Tuesday, September 14, 2004
More Ahhhnaald + Bush responses
Responding to Matt's first post, which was mostly in response to this post (which was in response to this post)....
(Matt's words in bold faced blue, mine in normal fontth)
I think Bush's (or Wolfowitz's) transformative vision of democracy in the middle east is a great one. I supported the war in Iraq, and not because of any belief of weapons of mass destruction, but because of my own vision of foreign policy, which, summed up, is "death to tyrants." I think it was a little disingenuous of Bush to present this as anything other than a very long-term move.
It's cool that Matt gets the real purpose. However, there were several good reasons for selling the Iraq war on the secondary purposes instead of the primary purpose.
1) There was no possibility of international support (particularly UN sanction which we really wanted) if we presented our case as a deliberate attempt to remake the entire Middle East (cept for perhaps the anglosphere cause they're hoopy froods too).
2) Countries like Iran and Syria would not have waited for the war to end before sending in their fighters. In all likelihood, the Arab world would've risen up in mass indignant that we were attempting to impose our world view on the Arabs (but getting the Arabs to adopt our worldview is critical to success in this war).
3) America is not nearly Wilsonian enough to accept such an argument. We're still predominately a Jacksonian nation (see popular response to Zell). The war had to be presented in much simpler life and death terms for the public to support the war at a level that it would accept the anticipated casualties (think Kosovo and Somalia which were both cast in purely Wilsonian arguments).
By choosing to emphasize the secondary reasons (WMD, terrorist ties, Saddam's a bad bad man) instead of the primary reason (democratizing the Middle East), the war became tenable.
Now on the accusation of a disingenuous time table, a realistic time table was given for the secondary reasons (the reasons that were emphasized). We did indeed remove Saddam from power, eliminate his WMD programs, and stopped Saddam's support for terrorist activities - all in short order. However, democratizing the Middle East will indeed take a while. However, we can't really tip our hand yet (though Bush is kinda hinting at it a bit more openly than he used to and has said that both rebuilding Iraq and the WoT will take a while).
War costs money, though, and so does reconstruction. And if we had a president who was willing to ask America to make the sacrifices necessary to pay for democracy in Iraq, I could vote for him. But Bush is not that president. He insists on keeping the tax cuts which were proposed during record surpluses, now that we're looking at record deficits. And it's not like he's cutting spending in other areas.
Now, the 2001 tax cuts were indeed primarily offered to give the surplus back to the people, but the 2003 tax cut (which really just accelerated the 2001 cut) was offered for the purpose of economic stimulation.
Also this criticism ignores the fact that Bush needed to do something to stimulate the economy- which I find inconsistent with the prior criticism that Bush is unresponsive to the desires of the public (this is what was really meant in the Bush is not accountable criticism). Clearly, getting the economy headed in the right direction was something the public really really wanted Bush to do.
Now there are three traditional macroeconomic techniques available to the government to stimulate the economy. 1) Reduce interest rates (which Greenspan did) 2) Increase government spending (which Bush did) 3) Decrease taxes (which Bush did).
Even though I think some of the spending choices were ill-advised (cough... massive new Medicare entitlement... cough), raising taxes or holding a tight line on spending would've limited the efforts to revive the economy. Also had Bush gone that route, Kerry's criticism that Bush did nothing about job losses would've rung true.
The key question to me remains, will spending be held in line over the next four years as we're coming out of the recession now?
I don't think Bush is being honest about what it would and will cost to build a democracy in the middle east.
See my earlier point. We can't sell the war as a democracy building exercise, so it has to remain a a nudge nudge wink wink say no more sort of thing for those who know.
And I think his political connections are ensuring that our money isn't being spent as well as it could be over there; that's no place for no-bid contracts.
Based on the construction of this sentence, I'm interpreting this as Matt believes there is a place (or situation) for no-bid contracts. I'm interested on what situation that would be. Cause to me being on the verge of war is the place and time for a no-bid contract, cause you don't want to find yourself relying on an unknown quantity. To me the time for when a no-bid contract is inappropriate is during peace time. Note that in 2001, Halliburton won the multi-year LOGCAP in a competitive bidding process (which would make Halliburton the natural recipient of the war-time no-bid contract). A brief review of the Halliburton contract is given in this article.
I think Kerry is a better choice to manage reconstruction in Iraq, if for no other reason than that the Iraqis don't hate him as much yet.
The primary source of difficulties in the reconstruction (the obvious euphanism for people blowing up stuff) is not Iraqi animus towards Bush. Ratherth [-ed isn't that superscript joke getting a little old? yeah, I'll stop once CBS fesses up], it's from the Arabs (I'm including some Iraqis here) looking to establish the new caliphate. These caliphites [-ed Is caliphites a word? Quiet you.] view the creation of a new democracy as a threat to their plans. If it was Bush animus motivating the attacks, then the attacks would be focused more on US troops and not on the fledgling Iraqi government and the various internationals (Phillipinos, the Nepalese, French Journalists...).
Now if the criticism was "Kerry would be a better manager because of his management skills", I couldn't dismiss it out of hand, but I would still disagree.
And the, "but now the Iraqis will see that in democracies, torturers are brought to justice" meme is a little much, don't you think? Abu Ghraib is not going to help our case for democracy. Sending torturers to jail is not going to impress Muslims used to seeing people beheaded for homosexuality.
Well, I did mention that it might sound a little panglossian. However, something bad was going to happen in the war. It always does. Sometimes it's prison torture. Sometimes it's bombing the Chinese embassy.
What matters is how you deal with the problem afterwards, and I'm relatively pleased with the response and feel that we're trying to make the best of a bad situation.
And speaking of homosexuality, how about that Federal Marriage Amendment? Now there's a good use of the President's time while Iraq and Afghanistan are struggling.
Again I find this criticism inconsistent with the earlier charge that Bush was unresponsive to the public. Thanks to SF and MA (and a number of other localities), there was (and still is) a public outcry to do something. Judging public sentiment based on ballot initiatives, Bush's actions do appear to be inline with public desire to define marriage as heterosexual marriage.
While there is room for criticism on his choice of response (I prefer letting the legislatures/ballot initiatives decide), I don't think it's fair to criticize Bush for spending some time on the issue. Responding to widely voiced popular sentiment is what we expect our elected officials to do.
So recognizing that some response must be given, how much time should Bush spend on it? Definitely less than the time spent on the WoT. To me, it appears to be a back burner issue for Bush as it elicited all of a single pro forma sentence during his acceptance speech ("Because the union of a man and woman deserves an honored place in our society, I support the protection of marriage against activist judges.") versus the Iraq/Afghanistan/WoT portion of his speech which went on for 40 minutes or so.
And no, there hasn't been a new Gulf of Tonkin resolution, but come on, you can't seriously suggest that the Bush administration hasn't tried to grab power from the judicial branch; they've greatly expanded the definition and use of military detention. Whether they're right to do so (and to some extent I think they are) is another issue entirely. But that's happening. And if you don't think Justice is resistant to judicial and legislative review, than you didn't watch Ashcroft testify before Congress.
While potentially undesirable, taking power from the judicial branch would not be a reduction in democracy in the US as the judicial branch is not elected (the initial assertion).
As to Justice (and I concede that Ashcroft doesn't like testifying), I have a much more favorable opinion of this Department than I did of the Reno department. Plus this Justice Department appears willing to admit and correct their mistakes. Also note that when faced with a judicial decision that the admin REALLY didn't like (requiring a hearing to determine the status of all the Gitmo detainees), they still went ahead and followed through on the decision. So I don't think that Bush is particularly abusing the judicial branch.
===============================================================
So anyways. Welcome Matt (again) to Polyscifi - where politics and alien women are debated.
Comments(0) |
(Matt's words in bold faced blue, mine in normal fontth)
I think Bush's (or Wolfowitz's) transformative vision of democracy in the middle east is a great one. I supported the war in Iraq, and not because of any belief of weapons of mass destruction, but because of my own vision of foreign policy, which, summed up, is "death to tyrants." I think it was a little disingenuous of Bush to present this as anything other than a very long-term move.
It's cool that Matt gets the real purpose. However, there were several good reasons for selling the Iraq war on the secondary purposes instead of the primary purpose.
1) There was no possibility of international support (particularly UN sanction which we really wanted) if we presented our case as a deliberate attempt to remake the entire Middle East (cept for perhaps the anglosphere cause they're hoopy froods too).
2) Countries like Iran and Syria would not have waited for the war to end before sending in their fighters. In all likelihood, the Arab world would've risen up in mass indignant that we were attempting to impose our world view on the Arabs (but getting the Arabs to adopt our worldview is critical to success in this war).
3) America is not nearly Wilsonian enough to accept such an argument. We're still predominately a Jacksonian nation (see popular response to Zell). The war had to be presented in much simpler life and death terms for the public to support the war at a level that it would accept the anticipated casualties (think Kosovo and Somalia which were both cast in purely Wilsonian arguments).
By choosing to emphasize the secondary reasons (WMD, terrorist ties, Saddam's a bad bad man) instead of the primary reason (democratizing the Middle East), the war became tenable.
Now on the accusation of a disingenuous time table, a realistic time table was given for the secondary reasons (the reasons that were emphasized). We did indeed remove Saddam from power, eliminate his WMD programs, and stopped Saddam's support for terrorist activities - all in short order. However, democratizing the Middle East will indeed take a while. However, we can't really tip our hand yet (though Bush is kinda hinting at it a bit more openly than he used to and has said that both rebuilding Iraq and the WoT will take a while).
War costs money, though, and so does reconstruction. And if we had a president who was willing to ask America to make the sacrifices necessary to pay for democracy in Iraq, I could vote for him. But Bush is not that president. He insists on keeping the tax cuts which were proposed during record surpluses, now that we're looking at record deficits. And it's not like he's cutting spending in other areas.
Now, the 2001 tax cuts were indeed primarily offered to give the surplus back to the people, but the 2003 tax cut (which really just accelerated the 2001 cut) was offered for the purpose of economic stimulation.
Also this criticism ignores the fact that Bush needed to do something to stimulate the economy- which I find inconsistent with the prior criticism that Bush is unresponsive to the desires of the public (this is what was really meant in the Bush is not accountable criticism). Clearly, getting the economy headed in the right direction was something the public really really wanted Bush to do.
Now there are three traditional macroeconomic techniques available to the government to stimulate the economy. 1) Reduce interest rates (which Greenspan did) 2) Increase government spending (which Bush did) 3) Decrease taxes (which Bush did).
Even though I think some of the spending choices were ill-advised (cough... massive new Medicare entitlement... cough), raising taxes or holding a tight line on spending would've limited the efforts to revive the economy. Also had Bush gone that route, Kerry's criticism that Bush did nothing about job losses would've rung true.
The key question to me remains, will spending be held in line over the next four years as we're coming out of the recession now?
I don't think Bush is being honest about what it would and will cost to build a democracy in the middle east.
See my earlier point. We can't sell the war as a democracy building exercise, so it has to remain a a nudge nudge wink wink say no more sort of thing for those who know.
And I think his political connections are ensuring that our money isn't being spent as well as it could be over there; that's no place for no-bid contracts.
Based on the construction of this sentence, I'm interpreting this as Matt believes there is a place (or situation) for no-bid contracts. I'm interested on what situation that would be. Cause to me being on the verge of war is the place and time for a no-bid contract, cause you don't want to find yourself relying on an unknown quantity. To me the time for when a no-bid contract is inappropriate is during peace time. Note that in 2001, Halliburton won the multi-year LOGCAP in a competitive bidding process (which would make Halliburton the natural recipient of the war-time no-bid contract). A brief review of the Halliburton contract is given in this article.
I think Kerry is a better choice to manage reconstruction in Iraq, if for no other reason than that the Iraqis don't hate him as much yet.
The primary source of difficulties in the reconstruction (the obvious euphanism for people blowing up stuff) is not Iraqi animus towards Bush. Ratherth [-ed isn't that superscript joke getting a little old? yeah, I'll stop once CBS fesses up], it's from the Arabs (I'm including some Iraqis here) looking to establish the new caliphate. These caliphites [-ed Is caliphites a word? Quiet you.] view the creation of a new democracy as a threat to their plans. If it was Bush animus motivating the attacks, then the attacks would be focused more on US troops and not on the fledgling Iraqi government and the various internationals (Phillipinos, the Nepalese, French Journalists...).
Now if the criticism was "Kerry would be a better manager because of his management skills", I couldn't dismiss it out of hand, but I would still disagree.
And the, "but now the Iraqis will see that in democracies, torturers are brought to justice" meme is a little much, don't you think? Abu Ghraib is not going to help our case for democracy. Sending torturers to jail is not going to impress Muslims used to seeing people beheaded for homosexuality.
Well, I did mention that it might sound a little panglossian. However, something bad was going to happen in the war. It always does. Sometimes it's prison torture. Sometimes it's bombing the Chinese embassy.
What matters is how you deal with the problem afterwards, and I'm relatively pleased with the response and feel that we're trying to make the best of a bad situation.
And speaking of homosexuality, how about that Federal Marriage Amendment? Now there's a good use of the President's time while Iraq and Afghanistan are struggling.
Again I find this criticism inconsistent with the earlier charge that Bush was unresponsive to the public. Thanks to SF and MA (and a number of other localities), there was (and still is) a public outcry to do something. Judging public sentiment based on ballot initiatives, Bush's actions do appear to be inline with public desire to define marriage as heterosexual marriage.
While there is room for criticism on his choice of response (I prefer letting the legislatures/ballot initiatives decide), I don't think it's fair to criticize Bush for spending some time on the issue. Responding to widely voiced popular sentiment is what we expect our elected officials to do.
So recognizing that some response must be given, how much time should Bush spend on it? Definitely less than the time spent on the WoT. To me, it appears to be a back burner issue for Bush as it elicited all of a single pro forma sentence during his acceptance speech ("Because the union of a man and woman deserves an honored place in our society, I support the protection of marriage against activist judges.") versus the Iraq/Afghanistan/WoT portion of his speech which went on for 40 minutes or so.
And no, there hasn't been a new Gulf of Tonkin resolution, but come on, you can't seriously suggest that the Bush administration hasn't tried to grab power from the judicial branch; they've greatly expanded the definition and use of military detention. Whether they're right to do so (and to some extent I think they are) is another issue entirely. But that's happening. And if you don't think Justice is resistant to judicial and legislative review, than you didn't watch Ashcroft testify before Congress.
While potentially undesirable, taking power from the judicial branch would not be a reduction in democracy in the US as the judicial branch is not elected (the initial assertion).
As to Justice (and I concede that Ashcroft doesn't like testifying), I have a much more favorable opinion of this Department than I did of the Reno department. Plus this Justice Department appears willing to admit and correct their mistakes. Also note that when faced with a judicial decision that the admin REALLY didn't like (requiring a hearing to determine the status of all the Gitmo detainees), they still went ahead and followed through on the decision. So I don't think that Bush is particularly abusing the judicial branch.
===============================================================
So anyways. Welcome Matt (again) to Polyscifi - where politics and alien women are debated.
Comments(0) |
